When people use the products, services, and the systems we create, their experience is what they remember. Whether physical or digital, the things we design shape experiences. Organizations like Disney Parks, Apple, and Southwest Airlines are known for creating incredible experiences that people return to again and again. But designing complete experiences can feel like an arduous task because experiences are insanely diverse, complicated, and seemingly limitless. Where do we start when creating experience-centered design and what facets of people’s experiences should we consider?

During Beyond UX, you’ll expand your experience design vocabulary and learn how to approach designing with a holistic, experience-level perspective. We’ll play a party game that introduces AoE4D: Aspects of Experience for Design. This practical framework synthesizes pivotal research from the social sciences, business, and design into a robust experience design cheat sheet. AoE4D integrates standard UX concepts like accessibility and affordances alongside matters like cultural background, intentions, and emotions that affect the way people interact with design. As we play the game, each attendee will play the role of designer and user to explore designing at an experience level. Expect to laugh, meet new people, and see in new ways! Don’t miss this fun night of experience design.

Here’s our plan for the evening:

5:30pm | Check in, snacks, drinks.

6:00pm | Hello! Introduce AoE4D. Game Rules.

6:20pm | Game 1: People are Strange: Getting to Know Users.

6:40pm | Game 2: Stranger Things: Interpreting Products.

7:00pm | Game 3: Setting the Scene: Working with Limitations.

7:30pm | Recap. Questions. Next Steps.

7:45pm | End. Mingle!

AoE4D was originally developed for the Experience Design MFA at Miami University and it has been used to guide social design projects in the Cincinnati area. It has unlocked new approaches to experience-centered design and we can’t wait to share it, so you can use it in your work.

Ticket Prices

FREE for AIGA student members

$5 for AIGA members

$15 for non-members

About the Speaker

Dennis Cheatham, Assistant Professor of Communication Design and Graduate Director of the MFA in Experience Design at Miami University

Dennis Cheatham is an Assistant Professor of Communication Design and Graduate Director of the MFA in Experience Design at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He researches ways people and design decisions intersect at experiential and systemic levels. Cheatham’s recent work explores how co-creating end-of-life choices with stakeholders can facilitate meaningful decision-making resources and tools; ways multiple intelligence theories can be applied to facilitate learning necessary for addressing complex problems; and how rhetoric and semantics in design affect aspirations and goals. He is a Scripps Gerontology Center Research Fellow and his current research work is a transdisciplinary research project titled Living Values that focuses on end-of-life choices and advance care planning for underserved populations in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. Prior to Cheatham’s academic appointment, he practiced design professionally for fifteen years as a creative director and graphic, interaction, and experience designer at agencies, in-house, and non-profit organizations in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area.